My name is pronounced "AL-uh-MEE-dee-yang" and it originated from an Animorphs fanfic I wrote, many, many years ago. It's an obvious adaption of the name of the city "Alameda" in Northern California, where I was born. As an internet name it's nothing great, but I use it for everything, if only for the sake of convinience as no one is likely to use it before me. You can call me Alam, Alamed, Al, Medy... anything you like. (I'll also answer to MJ and Michan.)

Pokemon TCG

I first learned about Pokémon through the TV show, but soon afterwards my best friend got me hooked into the card game, just as Jungle was coming out in English. Early on, my collection was small and mostly consisted of donations, but I was diligent. Every year, as my income increased, so did my collection. I went from a binder to a box, and then more boxes. However, due to the cost involved of simply keeping up with new releases, I've never been really up-to-date on my collections, except for a time between 2003 and 2004 when I participated Prerelease tournaments. (I even won one -- Magma versus Aqua -- which is why my scans from that set were relatively complete early on.) Occasionally I buy out other people's collections and get a little further ahead, but generally I focus on older cards in both languages.

Since 2002, I have tried to scan every card I own, and maintain a very simple website where I upload them all for general use (see below). Any scan from my site is free for anyone to upload to this wiki -- I'm rather too busy and my collection too massive for me to do it myself.

My starters tend to be Water types for convenience's sake, since you need Surf to win any game, you don't have to cart around a Surf slave, plus Surf is a decent attack in its own right. I think Cyndaquil/Quilava/Typhlosion are just cute. Beanbags on fire!) Blaziken is +Fighting, which I like. But usually they're all water... the two fires are a coincidence... really...

I use an N64 gamesharky-thing/multi-region adapter to play the Japanese Stadium games. The original Japanese Stadium I bought out of curiousity -- however, it is extremely inadequate compared to Stadium 2, so I haven't put any time into it. For both Stadium 2 games (English and Japanese) I'm still working to finish round two; I'm having trouble on the Challenge Cups, but admittedly I don't try all that often. As for Stadium 1... I can't remember if I've won it or not. Perhaps not.

My Blue and my original copy of Crystal have had their batteries die. (My little sister was playing blue, and grinding for levels so hard her Bulbasaur was at level 60... before she had four badges! Needless to say, she was mad when it would no longer keep a save file.) I tried a battery replacement without soldering, since I didn't have a soldering iron thing yet, but the Blue battery didn't take, and the Crystal cartridge didn't keep saves for more than 9 months. (That and the clock broke. Really. Hard.) I bought another Crystal after that, and made do with Red and Yellow for the color carts. (I suppose I could try soldering the batteries in, since I have a soldering whatsit now.)

While I'm not as fond of the metal carts, I do love the gameplay additions of breeding and held items, and have a not-too-shabby team for Stadium. No one else I know still plays those old games, so I haven't made a team for competitive battling, or tested my current team for human opponents.

Advanced and Beyond

In truth, I neglected Pokémon when Ruby and Sapphire came out, since they just didn't "take" with me then. However, when FireRed and LeafGreen were released, I was really excited, so when my friend gave me one of her GBAs I ran out and bought LeafGreen right away. That copy of LeafGreen has a living National Dex, and a mostly complete Johto/Hoenn Dex. Emerald I bought because by all accounts it was the best one yet, and for its breeding niceties. Lately, I've been breeding like wild in Emerald for import into Diamond and for use in the Battle Frontier. Like in the Stadiums, I have trouble in the area where you don't provide the members of your team (Battle Factory).

I got a really good deal on an original DS so I bought Diamond, even though I was reluctant at first, since the interface was slower and I frankly didn't care for a lot of the new Pokés. However, I've come to enjoy it, and look forward to getting Platinum in English. I've put more than 100 hours into breeding, and have a pretty good spiking Skarmory and a nearly perfect Blissey and Electabuzz (due to be traded into Electivire as soon as I find someone with another cart, or when I get Platinum). I'm currently working on a physical sweeping Lucario and a Flinchax Togekiss.

TCG for GB

I have both games in Japanese (at least until I lost one!) and the first in English. (The deck that pwns is still the Haymaker...) Ages ago I made a walkthrough for the second game, which is available at [1] and a few other places. I'm currently most of the way through exanding and updating it, so keep an eye out.

Images I've Scanned and Fixed

This does not include my normal card scans, as that would be insane to show in one place.

All these images are scans from the Trading Card Game for Gameboy Strategy Guides (from both games). I scanned them and removed the background, in many cases giving them alpha. For a few, I've even reconstructed portions of them that were behind floating text or cut off by the page bleed or other images, which was something of a pain. Since they're on the wiki I didn't watermark them, but don't use them irresponsibly or credit them as your own. Use them on the wiki as you like, however.